Safeguarding

A safeguarding posture that holds at 23:00 on a Saturday.

TutorStudio is aligned to Keeping Children Safe in Education 2025. The Designated Safeguarding Lead pathway, the reach-out menu and the audit log are structural — not features behind a paywall, not pages in a policy folder, not paragraphs added at the end of a release. They are the spine of every cohort surface.

KCSIE 2025

Aligned to the statutory floor.

Keeping Children Safe in Education 2025 came into force on 1 September 2025. We treat it as a floor, not a ceiling. Annual recommitment is a workflow, not a memo; the reach-out menu sits on every primary screen; safeguarding-relevant actions are append-only.

Annual recommitment

Renewed every September

Recommitment workflow, not a memoEvery September the KCSIE recommitment is published, dated and signed. Lapse triggers an architectural reminder before the academic year opens.

Reach-out menu

Two clicks from any screen

Tutor · Parent · Help team · ChildlineOn every primary surface that can render to a minor, the reach-out menu is reachable in two clicks. The Childline route is anonymous and not logged to the student account.

Annual training

Prompts before lapse

Renewal reminders, completion capturedTutors and agency leads receive timed prompts before their training currency lapses. Completion is captured and is visible to procurement on the agency roster.

Audit log

Append-only, exportable

Every action timestampedSafeguarding-relevant actions carry an actor, a timestamp and a reason. The log is append-only at the database layer and exportable to a designated lead on request.

The DSL pathway

A named lead, always reachable.

The Designated Safeguarding Lead pathway is the canonical escalation backbone. Concerns route to a TutorStudio Safeguarding Team lead within minutes, day or night. Agency-affiliated and school-commissioned engagements add their own DSL tiers; the routing engine never lets a case fall through.

Tier 1

TutorStudio Safeguarding Team

24/7 with documented out-of-hours redirectGeneral concerns reach first triage in five minutes; crisis cases in one minute. Out-of-hours is bridged to Childline, Samaritans and 999 per published runbook.

Tier 2

Agency DSL

Working-hours + named deputyWhere the engagement is agency-affiliated, the agency DSL receives the concern within fifteen minutes during working hours, four hours out-of-hours.

Tier 3

School DSL

Joint-DSL patternWhere the engagement is school-commissioned, the school’s DSL is brought in on a joint-DSL pattern within institutional hours. Statutory deadlines remain governing.

Tier 4

Statutory agencies

LADO · LA · Police · NHSAllegations against staff, mandatory reporting and crisis cases route to statutory agencies within statutory windows. Every step is audit-logged.

Raising a concern

The 5 R’s, supported by the surface.

Recognise. Respond. Report. Record. Refer. Each step is scaffolded by a panel inside the product so the tutor, parent or student raising the concern is not left to remember the path under pressure. A child who reaches out is never silenced; the outbound persists regardless of classifier state.

In product

The reach-out panel

Recognise & RespondCalm-clinical opening, non-leading prompts drawn from NSPCC disclosure-response guidance. No interrogation, no leading questions.
Report & RecordOne-click into the Tier 1 DSL queue; structured concern row opens with disclosure fragment pre-populated for tutor review and confirmation.
ReferAge-appropriate signposting from the verbatim resource fixture — Samaritans, Shout, Childline, Papyrus HOPELINE, CALM, NHS 111, 999.

Crisis routes

If a child is at acute risk

Samaritans · 116 123 · 24/7Anyone who needs to talk, any time, free from any phone.
Childline · 0800 1111 · 24/7Children and young people up to age 19 — anonymous and free.
Shout · text 85258 · 24/7Free text support for anyone in crisis, in the UK.
Emergency · 999If someone’s life is in immediate danger.

Verbatim and reviewed quarterlyThese numbers, hours and routes are reviewed for currency every quarter. A stale resource is treated as a P0 content bug.

Policies & evidence

Published, dated, enforceable.

Every published policy carries an enforcement playbook, a tooled action path, an audit log, an appeals process and a transparency commitment. An unenforced policy is itself a breach — so we publish what we can defend, and we defend what we publish.

Safeguarding policy

Versioned, signed

KCSIE 2025-aligned · annually recommittedAvailable on the trust page. Carries a version number, a date, a designated lead reference, and a per-version audit trail.

DBS posture

Checked before activation

No clearance, no live sessionsTutors complete DBS clearance during onboarding. The check is tracked nightly; expiry alerts fire well before lapse.

AADC posture

Children’s Code defaults

Most privacy-preserving by defaultUnder-18 accounts default to the strictest applicable settings; the AADC posture statement is published on the trust page.

Appeals

Fair-process pathway

Submitter route, visible and datedEvery enforcement decision carries an appeals route. Submitter, parent (where relevant) and DSL all see the same audit trail.

Trust centre · published artefacts

The four trust-centre surfaces.

Procurement-grade evidence and an unambiguous route for anyone who needs to raise a concern. Each surface is reviewed at least quarterly against KCSIE 2025 and the published policy; a stale link, a stale number, or a stale procedure on any of them is treated as a P0 bug.

Contact our safeguarding team

If something is wrong, reach out direct.

For procurement-grade evidence (KCSIE policy, AADC posture statement, DBS register, sub-processor list), see the trust page. For an immediate concern about a child, use the reach-out menu inside the product or contact your designated lead.

See the trust page Read the AADC posture